March 20 was the first day of Spring (not that you would really know it based on the weather around here) and Caterpillar Day! So, of course, all week long, we celebrated Eric Carle and Caterpillar Day in the NPES Learning Commons!

Here’s what we did:

*We had a “Read a Book by Eric Carle” Center where there was a stack of – you guessed it – Eric Carle books to read and picture walk through!

*A “Create Your Own Eric Carle Inspired Art” with glue and tissue paper for students to use to create a picture of a flower, or sunshine, or anything! A good way to clean out your glue sticks 😉

*A “Be the Grouchy Ladybug” Center. My super duper Media Assistant created a ladybug that students could use to BE the Grouchy Ladybug…like this (we had an iPad nearby for them to use to take pictures):

This week also happen to be my story time week, so I planned an Eric Carle-themed Story Time for Lion Cubs, Park North, and one of the classes at school that I do story time for each month. It went like this…

I created a bug/food themed playlist on Spotify for story timers to listen to as they waited for story time to start. If you want to search for it, it is called “Carle Themed Storytime.”

We read (and acted out) From Head to Toe (great story to use to incorporate some movement!)

I handed out cloud shapes before reading Little Cloud. When I read about the shape they had, they came up and put their cloud on our “sky” (flannel board).

Finally, we acted out The Tiny Seed by making ourselves into a little ball and then pretending to grow. I asked the kids what they would be if they were a tiny seed and that’s what they pretended to grow into (we had sunflowers, trees, Christmas trees, watermelons, and a rose).